Still waiting

I’m not holding out and keeping my surgery date secret. I still don’t know when it is going to be. I’m a bit frustrated at this point and just want the date so that I can move forward with planning my next few weeks of freedom. I’ve left a couple of messages for Dr. Nauta and finally today I heard through the Mt. Auburn grapevine that he will let me know my surgery date by the end of this week. There are many things I need to do to prepare and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to ask for 6 weeks of lead time before the surgery. In the past I’ve had surgeries that were scheduled 1 or 2 weeks out and those were stressful as I struggled to quickly get everything in order – work, home, family, etc. I definitely left many loose ends with those surgeries.

I’ve also had surgeries that I knew about weeks or months in advance – and those are stressful in a whole different way. It is possible to have too much time to think about things – I end up trying to micromanage. Given my history of unexpected complications (my leg for instance…) I am actually not freaking out about the “what if’s”. I know I can handle whatever is thrown at me – at least physically. Right now my imagination is getting the best of me and I am assuming that the reason I have not heard from Dr. Nauta with my surgery date is that he can’t find a neurosurgeon willing to take on my case – that the doctors don’t want to operate on me because of my history and previous complications. I know this isn’t the situation, but in the 3 weeks since I met with Dr. Nauta and told him to go ahead and schedule things, this is one scenario that keeps popping up. I’ve been assured that this is a crazy thought and not even a possibility. I’ll rest easy when I have my date and list of doctors – maybe not. I’ll be able to focus on worrying about the actual surgery and recovery, something more concrete and reasonable to stress over.